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Thursday, May 3, 2012

On Malcolm X, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and being female--

Hated
by Literature

Dawn Potter

[first published in Solstice (fall/winter 2011-12)

I was in my early teens when I met,
for the first time, a book that didn’t like me. I’d read by this point plenty
of books that I didn’t like. Not that my
judgment was reliable: many of these books were simply too complex for my
unsophisticated brain (even the simplest Joyce story had the power to drive me
to hysterical frustration), while others, such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, required more appreciation for quotidian dullness
than I was able to muster at fifteen. Still, I had opinions, and I had vanity,
and I had an irrepressible confidence in my love affair with literature that my
infatuation with Austen and Brontë and Dickens shamelessly abetted.

I
had met all of these comrades by way of my mother; for once I’d finished
clear-cutting the juvenile stacks at the public library, she became my primary
source of reading material. She was adept at eyeing my emotional condition and
assuaging it with the appropriate nineteenth-century novel, and I’m not sure
that it would ever have occurred to either of us that I might benefit from a
jolt. It did, however, occur to my father, who, rushing through the house on
his way to work, paused long enough one day to hand me his paperback copy of The
Autobiography of Malcolm X.

To
understand my reaction to this book, you need to understand not only how white
I was but how naïvely white. And how naïvely female. Of course I knew I was a
white girl, sister of another white girl, daughter of white parents.
Nonetheless, though my parents were well educated and well read, both had been
born into the rural-industrial working class: into small-time farming and coal
mining, steel-mill labor and truck driving. My parents had struggled to evade
that fate: they’d gone to college; they’d read books; they’d attained advanced
degrees. Yet although we now lived decorously on the outskirts of a city, where
we patronized bookstores and listened to classical music and supported liberal
causes and ate fish (a horrifying food, as far as my Appalachian relatives were
concerned), my parents remained fearful of urban dangers and thin-skinned about
their past. They were nervous about visitors, suspicious of outsiders’ motives,
self-flagellating about their shyness.

As a child, I
often and easily imagined our family of four on an island in the center of a
deep lake, in a Conestoga wagon jolting across an endless prairie. We were cut
off, cut adrift, dependent only on one another; yet also cherished, yet also
protected. So when I return to that moment when my father handed me the
autobiography, I also see now what I didn’t see then: my father’s bravery.
Given his own fears, I can still hardly believe that he was the one person who
encouraged me, wide-eyed and clueless, to open a book and crash face-first into
cruel, brilliant, unforgiving Malcolm X.

The books that hate me may be very
different from one another in most ways, but all share a particular
characteristic: they ruthlessly dissect attitudes that I’ve tended to take for
granted. Novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, for instance: she’s an author whose
books hate me, though on the surface her Edwardian family novels might seem to
have more in common with Dickens et al. than with The Autobiography of
Malcolm X. But in truth, Ivy is the meanest
writer I know, and the especial target of her excoriating comedy is my humane
and optimistic assumption that “we can work out this problem if we just sit
down and talk about it.” Fat chance, as the opening of her novel The
Last and the First makes clear:

“What an
unbecoming light this is!” said Eliza Heriot, looking from the globe above the
table the faces around it.

“Are
we expected to agree?” said her son, as the light fell on her own face. “Or is
it a moment for silence?”

“The
effect is worse with every day. I hardly dare look at any of you.”

“You
have found the courage,” said her daughter, “and it is fair that you should
show it. You appointed the breakfast hour yourself.”

Lady
Heriot did not suggest that anyone else should appoint it.

Her characters
certainly do talk; in fact, talk is about all they do. But they purposely use
family conversation to ridicule, to flay, to tyrannize. In a Compton-Burnett
novel, nobody ever feels better after a chat. Talk equals damage, and Dame Ivy
makes it clear that anyone who believes otherwise is a fool. She is a writer
who takes a gleeful, amoral pleasure in identifying with her tyrants, and she
is so skilled at her work that a reader quickly, and dreadfully, begins to do
the same. As essayist Thomas Rayfiel has written of Dame Ivy, “one is complicit
with the artist's indulgence in her vice, executed so skillfully, argued with
such convincing intelligence, you find yourself nodding in unwilling agreement
with rapists, torturers, murderers whose actions are justified by arguments
that seem, in the context of what she has created, incontrovertible. This can't
be happening, you think. This can't be happening to me.”

In a way, the same
could be said of Malcolm X, who buttresses his opinions and assertions with
what seem, in the context of the Autobiography, to be incontrovertible arguments. There’s no answering him. Later,
away from the book, I might begin to invent some rejoinder, some defense. But
with his book in my hand, his words spilling into my addled brain “like steam
under pressure”: then, even when he wrong, he’s right.

“I started to be aware of the
peculiar attitude of white people toward me,” wrote Malcolm. “I sensed it had
to do with my father. It was an adult version of what several white children
had said at school, in hints, or sometimes in the open, which really expressed
what their parents had said—that the Black Legion or the Klan had killed my
father.”

I
was a very fair-skinned child, not quite as pale as a redhead but close: the
sort of white kid who is prone to blushes and rashes and can sunburn in half a
minute. Around our house my complexion was the focus of fretting and, for my
sister, annoyance: as in “We can’t go to the beach because Dawn is too white.”
I’d never felt especially happy about my paleness. But until I read the Autobiography,
I had never heard it so intensely and
obsessively chronicled and generalized—or so reviled.

White, white,
white! No longer did the word refer to my own irksome coloring. Now it had
become shorthand for every member of my family, all of my teachers, all of the
other writers I was reading, all of the violinists I was listening to, all of
the composers I was studying. For the first time in my life, I became conscious
of belonging to an unsavory subgroup that was not denoted by my relatives, or
my parents’ money struggles, or my terrible performances in gym class, or any
of the other worries that had heretofore beset me. I was white. That’s all it
took. I was white. Therefore, I was tainted.

If
I’d been older, I might have gotten angry at Malcolm’s assertions. If I’d been
a boy acclimated to heroics and grandstanding, I might have worshipped the
fervor while smoothly exempting myself from blame. But I wasn’t able to exempt
myself, and this speaker’s fervor, like the fervor of every overbearing man I’d
encountered, terrified me into silence. What’s more, I believed he had the
right to hate me. For in the same hot and scornful breath as his
generalizations, he offered proof. Had my father been murdered by the Klan? No,
my father was sitting peaceably in his study grading papers. I may have worried
over a million unlikely events, but I had never, ever, worried—not even
once—that the Klan would break down our door and murder my father. Malcolm,
however, had worried, and his fears had come true.

Thus,
within the first twenty pages of his book, did Malcolm X assert his supremacy
over me. No matter how unfair he was, how wrong, how hateful, he always managed
to twist my arm behind my back; he always managed to win. He accused me of
thinking thoughts that I never remembered thinking, of drawing conclusions I
never knew I was drawing. He announced, “What I am trying to say is that it
just never dawned on [white people] that I could understand, that I wasn’t a
pet, but a human being. They didn’t give me credit for having the same
sensitivity, intellect, and understanding that they would have been ready and
willing to recognize in a white boy in my position.” He declared, “This is the
sort of kindly condescension which I try to clarify today, to these
integration-hungry Negroes, about their ‘liberal’ white friends, those
so-called ‘good white people’—most of them anyway. I don’t care how nice one is
to you; the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really
see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind.”

Just before I entered first grade,
my family moved from Maryland to Rhode Island, into the house where we stayed
until I was almost thirteen. Next door, on the other side of the peeling picket
fence, lived Maynard and his parents: Judy and Maynard Senior. Maynard, who was
my younger sister’s age, possessed a desirable swing-set and a dippy overactive
mongrel named Choo-Choo. Despite these advantages, his yard was small, whereas
our corner lot possessed a climbing tree as well as numerous good places to
hide. I don’t know whether it was Maynard Senior’s or my father’s idea to
remove one of the slats in the picket fence; but very soon after we moved into
our house, my sister and Maynard and I were wriggling back and forth through
that fence, from one yard to the next—swinging, throwing sand, chasing each
other, barking at Choo-Choo, hiding under the rhododendrons.

The
year was 1970 or 1971, and Maynard’s family was black. Malcolm X’s assertions
vibrated in the aether, but my six-year-old ear was oblivious. Did I give
Maynard credit for “sensitivity, intellect, and understanding”? Probably not,
seeing as it wouldn’t have occurred to me to give anybody credit for those
attributes. Did I treat him “with kindly condescension”? Yes, I did; I
certainly did. But not because he was black: because he was a four-year-old
kid, the same age as my little annoying sister, whereas I was six and was thus
entitled to boss him around.

As I grew older, I
played with Maynard less often. He was a boy, a younger boy, veering off into
boy interests that I didn’t share. But the family stayed in our lives. Judy and
my mother occasionally drank coffee together; Maynard Senior kept an eye on our
house when we were away. During the six years we lived next door to Maynard’s
family, I have not the slightest memory of any parental conversation about skin
color, no sense that my father could “never . . . really see [Maynard Senior]
as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind.”

What I do remember
is that, on the day young Maynard came home from school and found his
heart-diseased mother dead on the kitchen floor, my mother was the person he
called for help.

A touching story, but Malcolm X
would have spit on it. Not a detail, not an anecdote, not even Judy’s dead body
would have changed his mind about the speciousness of “‘liberal’ white friends”
and the idiocy of “integration-hungry Negroes.” What’s more, simply recognizing
that he wouldn’t have fallen for this version of history, knowing how much he
would have scorned my so-called “innocent” reverie, makes me question it
myself. Clearly, at a level beyond memory or bewildered argument, I share the
guilt of my race. But that’s not the only guilt I share, and not all that the Autobiography hates about me.

For yes, it’s the
book itself that hates me, and that will hate me forever. Malcolm may have been
dead for more than forty years, but his chronicle never stops seething. Its
words and paragraphs, its splintering yellow pages, the chipped cover with its
creased, angry photograph assemble a composite life. Sometimes, as a child, I
seemed to feel the paper smoldering beneath my gaze. Words leapt like portents
from another planet: zoot suit, reefer, hustle, daddy-o. “A friend of mine [was] named ‘Sammy the Pimp,’”
shrugged the book. “I wore my guns as today I wear my neckties,” it announced.
And, dreadfully, “I believe [Uncle Tom’s Cabin is] the only novel I have ever read since I started
serious reading”. . . meaning that “I—yes, this scary, in-your-face polemic—I am what equals serious reading. You, with all your
novels, your idiotic poems: you know nothing about it.”

The Autobiography was first published in 1964, the year I was born.
Its scorching presumptions cowed me when I was fifteen, and they continue to
cow me each time I reread the book. Every single page finds a way to remind me
that I am ignorant, that novels and poetry aren’t serious reading, that Bach
doesn’t hold a candle to Lionel Hampton, that “marriage breakups are caused by
these movie- and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing
and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing—then
getting mad when a poor, scraggly husband comes in tired and sweaty from
working like a dog all day, looking for some food.”

This last
ignorance may have been the most devastating one to discover. For at fifteen,
when I first read the Autobiography, I
also learned that I shared the guilt of my sex; and when I say guilt, what I really mean is that deep, habituated, anxious
sense of unworthiness that so many women share. For Malcolm X is ruthless about
us, and his pronouncements are austere, chilling, irrevocable.

“All women, by
their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they
see strength.”

“I always had the
feeling that Ella somehow admired my rebellion against the world, because she,
who had so much more drive and guts than most men, often felt stymied by having
been born female.”

“I’d had too much
experience that women were only tricky, deceitful, untrustworthy flesh.”

“To tell a woman
not to talk was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or telling a hen
not to cackle.”

According
to the Autobiography, when Malcolm
finally does find the perfect wife, she is perfect because she is perfectly
obedient to him:

Betty . . .
understands me. I would even say I don’t imagine many other women might put up
with the way I am. Awakening the brainwashed black man and telling this
arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a
full-time job. If I have work to do when I am home, the little time I am at
home, she lets me have the quiet I need to work in. I’m rarely at home more
than half of any week: I have been away as much as five months. I never get
much chance to take her anywhere, and I know she likes to be with her husband.

Nevertheless, he can barely bring
himself to admit that he is fond of her: “I guess by now I will say I love
Betty. She’s the only woman I ever thought about loving.”

As a devotee of
nineteenth-century novels, I’d already read plenty of books that tacitly agreed
with such presumptions about women. Writing about Flora Finching, the
middle-aged romantic chatterbox in Little Dorrit, Dickens might as well have said, “To tell a woman not to talk [is]
like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun.” Writing about Mrs. Proudie, the
bishop’s overbearing wife in the Barchester novels, Trollope might as well have said, “She, who
had so much more drive and guts than most men, often felt stymied by having
been born female.” But these stereotypes, if no less wrenching in fact, were
more palatable to me because they were individualized. As a characters, Mrs.
Proudie really was an obnoxious loudmouth who made unnecessary trouble for her
timid husband. Beneath Flora’s silly chatter, I found a loyal, kind-hearted
woman who deserved her reader’s patience and goodwill.

But the Autobiography was different. Its blanket pronouncements claimed to
reveal real women, not characters; real white people, not characters; a real
hero named Malcolm X, not a character. What else could I do but believe its
message? I was fifteen years old. I was longing for love, and smitten with that
longing. I was melancholy, overexcited, prone to outburst, vain, nervous,
self-defeating, and talkative. Not only was I white, but I showed every sign of
growing up to be exactly the kind of woman that Malcolm would have despised.
The Autobiography hated me, and
the news was appalling.

Thirty years later, I’m a different
person, a different reader. I’ve aged. I’ve become better acquainted with the
worlds of men and politics and polemic. By and large, I’ve learned to
disconnect myself from the prejudices of the books I read. I’ve learned what not to reread: what poisons are too lethal to try twice.
I’m also more aware of this book’s authorial mysteries. As the title page
suggests, its creation depended on “the assistance of Alex Haley.” Though I can
only guess at how much and what sort of aid Haley offered, I know he was a
novelist and thus was likely to have influenced story organization and
development. Clearly, Malcolm X could formulate his own speeches and polemics,
so perhaps what Haley did for the book was to collaborate with the man to
create the character.

And that
complicated character is why I keep reading the Autobiography. Perhaps my reluctant attachment arises, at least in
part, from Malcolm X’s fervent honesty to his own convictions. As my friend
Nick reminds me, “he was assassinated for making [Nation of Islam leader]
Elijah Muhammad's many marital infidelities known to the outside world. So [even though] he had some truly
close-minded ideas about women, . . . he understood that fidelity is an
important aspect of human relationships.” That perception seems, in my case, to
apply to literary relationships as well. My fidelity to the Autobiography requires, as marriage does, a certain commitment to
blindness—that particular sort of blindness that is the flip side of trust.
It’s dangerous, this fidelity; for it tests both self-negation and
self-respect. It requires me to believe. This isn’t to say that I have to force myself to accept every one of
Malcolm X’s pronouncements. But when I read, I do have to believe in his
fervor; I do have to believe in his courage; I do have to believe in his
rhetorical intensity and his insistent, rhythmic oration.

Oh, that sound!
Really, I think that’s what lures me back and back to this difficult book. It’s
like a crazy dance that won’t stop, that won’t ever stop, that will kill you on
the dance floor.

If you’ve ever
lindy-hopped, you’ll know what I’m talking about. With most girls, you kind of
work opposite them, circling, side-stepping, leading. Whichever arm you lead
with is half-bent out there, your hands are giving that little pull, that
little push, touching her waist, her shoulders, her arms. She’s in, out,
turning, whirling, wherever you guide her. With poor partners, you feel their
weight. They’re slow and heavy. But with really good partners, all you need is
just the push-pull suggestion. They guide nearly effortlessly, even off the
floor and into the air, and your little solo maneuver is done on the floor
before they land, when they join you, whirling, right in step.

There’s no way in
the world I’d ever risk going out onto that floor with Malcolm X. Talk about
poor partners: good Lord, he’d be better off trampling me under his sharkskin
shoes. No, I can’t dance with this man. Everything about me is wrong. But
still, I want to watch from the sidelines. I want to see him work; I want to
see him shout. At least, when I’m reading his book, I get to breathe the smoke;
I get to listen to the trumpets wail. I might matter less than any other
character in the world, but at least I get to play my own pale and clumsy bit
part.